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After word spread last week that the state oil and gas supervisor had stepped down, once the Newsom administration thanked him for his service and the industry lamented the influence of politics on the position, environmental justice activists stepped up to take a little credit.

Local Republican leaders stood by Rep. Kevin McCarthy after his failure Tuesday to win enough votes to become speaker of the House, and even Kern’s top Democrat predicted Bakersfield’s most powerful politician will eventually claim the gavel, as consensus emerged that the televised balloting…

Several days after the end of Kern County’s recount of November 2022 ballots, state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, announced Tuesday her campaign will seek a count of its own.

Recounts in three of the four counties in state Senate District 16 remain in various stages of completion this week, with two all but finished, one expected to wrap up shortly after the holiday weekend and another yet to begin, election officials said Friday.

Kern County has an estimated 106,683 unprocessed ballots still to be processed from Tuesday's General Election, according to Mary Bedard, Kern County clerk and registrar of voters.

While the Kern County-backed campaign for a tax hike to support basic emergency services had the simple majority it needed to pass based on early returns, a union-backed measure to install term limits received overwhelming support, based on the same results. 

Rep. David Valadao pulled ahead of his Democratic challenger, Assemblyman Rudy Salas, in early results Tuesday night in the hard-fought race for California's 22nd Congressional District seat.

After winning the primary by nearly 14 percent, Republican candidate David Shepard is hopeful the trend continues, but he'll likely have to wait at least a few days to find out. 

It’s difficult for housing advocates to criticize Gov. Gavin Newsom because he’s done more to boost production than any other governor in recent memory — but that’s mostly because the bar is so low.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, unbowed in the face of local criticism while speaking to hundreds Friday morning during a surprise visit to Bakersfield, praised efforts in Kern to develop cutting-edge clean energy technologies that serve California's ambitious climate goals for transitioning away from pe…

On an already-hot Saturday morning in east Bakersfield, Assembly candidate and Kern County Supervisor Leticia Perez stands at the front of the electrical workers’ local union hall, working a crowd of fellow Democrats ready to knock on doors and talk to voters.

The crime spiral starts small, California attorney general candidate Nathan Hochman said. A criminal goes into a store, steals just shy of $950 in goods from a small business and walks, not runs out, because the lawbreaker knows he won't be prosecuted.

A fentanyl crisis, campus incidents filmed and shared on social media and questions about partisan politics are a few of the topics that have come up in the discussion about the future of the Kern High School District.

Coronavirus Cases widget

  • Positive Cases Among Kern Residents: 311,891

  • Deaths: 2,639

  • Recovered and Presumed Recovered Residents: 307,147

  • Percentage of all cases that are unvaccinated: 70.89

  • Percentage of all hospitalizations that are unvaccinated: 83.09

  • Source: Kern County Public Health Services Department

Updated: 3/23/23

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